A typical approach for deploying a network topology in a software defined networking (SDN) environment includes creating objects that represent logical switches, logical ports, firewalls, rules, and so forth, and associating the created objects with each other. Once the new network topology is defined, the topology may be realized within a datacenter fabric. Very often, however, creating and realizing the individual objects is time consuming and inefficient.
One way to determine the efficiency of a network deployment process is to measure a corresponding deployment time. A deployment time for deploying a network topology is the end-point of the deployment time, and it is the latest point of the topology realization when the last host realized the last piece of the configuration related to the deployment.
One way to improve a network deployment process is to create a template for a network topology for the purpose of cloning the network topology. For example, one may replicate overlay networks using a template referred to as a blueprint. Another approach includes generating input for deploying multiple identical networks with the same addresses for each node. These approaches, however, shorten the time required for preparing topology cloning requests before the requests are sent to a management plane (MP) and a central control plane (CCP), not the time required by the MP and CCP to actually process the received requests.